Stochastic terrorism is... this idea that you can incite people to violence by saying things that are not specifically inciting but are statistically likely to create somebody who will do something violent even if it's not individually predictable.
That's what they did with Trump. They basically invented this concept that yes, he may not have actually incited violence, but the whole totality of his persona is inciting, so we're going to strike him. So they sort of massively expanded the purview of things they can censor, just in that one moment.
In The Twitter Files, you see people, in real time, devising this policy and deciding that it's the right idea.
There was an article in Scientific American last November about stochastic terrorism: "How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence/Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity." That's by Bryn Nelson.
Why have I never noticed this term before? From the Scientific American article:
Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims....
Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children....
People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro-gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage....
Researchers have estimated that transgender people are more than fourfold more likely to be the victims of violent crime than their cisgender counterparts, and while not a direct link to violence, other scientists have linked disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism to a higher opposition to transgender rights.....
So if your criticism of something you don't like elicits disgust, you can, in fairly short order, be accused of inciting violence. I certainly have been seeing this form of reasoning, which, as Taibbi said, "massively expand[s] the purview of things [some people believe] they can censor." It's so threatening to free speech values, especially when biased censors are deciding which speech fomented the disgust they find... disgusting.
Here's Christopher Rufo's response to the Scientific American article: "The 'Stochastic Terror' Lie/The Left’s latest gambit for suppressing speech is built on preposterous grounds."
What does the word "stochastic" mean? OED: "Randomly determined; that follows some random probability distribution or pattern, so that its behaviour may be analysed statistically but not predicted precisely."
The idea of "stochastic terrorism" seems designed to blame someone as a leader of a group when there is no group. And the "leader" is a speaker who has only stimulated the beliefs and emotions that may cause some listeners to decide individually and on their own to take action.
Posts
86 comments:
It seems that to counter stochastic terrorism, they are committing stochastic terrorist. Twitter censorship certainly disgusted me.
"While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize"
I suspect this would rule out a lot of sermon material, not to mention blog commentary.
As someone once said... "It worked". So now Joe's handlers are filling the judiciary with leftie robes. Democracy, not a republic.
"immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection;"
It's funny to me that they spend so much effort attempting to create an illusion of intellectual rigor, but they throw this in and simply pretend that Trump was referring to all immigrants, and not the members of dangerous gangs that he was referring to. If you are going to bootstrap an ideology, like these guys are, you are going to need to commit a few small intellectual crimes.
There could be an MS-13 member I know about ― if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
Trump: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in ― and we’re stopping a lot of them ― but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.
They claim that because Trump did not specifically reference MS-13 in his answer, he was therefore talking about all immigrants, even though he was answering a specific question about MS-13.
That's stochastic misrepresentation. They misrepresent Trumps words constantly to create a hatred of him that, in fact, resulted in a couple of half assed assassination attempts. They have used the technique to create hatred of Trump's supporters, and justify letting them rot in jail as political prisoners.
I am glad you wrote this, I had no idea what they were blabbing about. It's food for thought.
When the Twitter Files came out, I said, "This will not move the needle at all. Not one fraction of an inch." I was right.
They-progressives- will do anything to shut you-any non-progressive-up. Your ideas, since they are not progressive, are toxic.
This does explain why black men have gone on a murder and crime spree since the BLM hysteria.
Liberals keep telling black men that they aren’t responsible for what they do and that they have a right (if not obligation) to stew in a murderous rage. All is allowed because Whitey is the devil.
Stochastic terrorism at its worst. Black men have gone on a wilding spree in response.
AOC has been using the term lately, as well. From a Fox report re her on CNN recently:
AOC claimed, "I think it’s uncomfortable serving with people who engage in what many experts deem stochastic terrorism, which is the incitement of violence in — an incitement of violence using digital means and large platforms so that individual themselves may not be the one that’s wielding a weapon."
She continued, "But I have had to ride, as has Representative Omar, I’ve consistently had to ride in 20,000 pound armored vehicles, in engaging in some of the most gruesome threats that you can imagine that were incited by Republican members. This is not just about a tweet. It is about what life looks like and the marshaling of hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people into doing something."
“hundreds, thousands, if not millions of people” …. Wow.
"Researchers have estimated ... "
Well, I'm sold. *cough*
Every time I see the phrase "Studies show" my antenna elevates. Junk science. This is laughable. Unfortunately, public schools are teaching this crap.
Good example of why I dropped my Scientific American subscription.
I knew what was up the first time I encountered the term "stochastic terrorism". Used to be, you needed to show a causal relationship between speech and an act of violence. But that was much too limiting for the left.
This is a stunning case of selective perception. Perhaps the author should review the massive payouts of the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America for their decades of protecting proven child molesters, child rapists, and the groomers who made it all possible. I suppose the "minor attracted persons" consider those payouts to be terrorism against their life goals?
Disgust analyses cut both ways.
No one has heard of stochastic analyses because they are weak correlational models. They sometimes make sense in obvious cases with supporting proof (e.g., exposure to tobacco smoke leads to disease among bystanders who never smoked), but don't work when causation involves multiple simultaneous factors. Correlation is not causation: a classic teaching example is that "Higher levels of ice cream consumption predicts increased crime." Yes...that's because people eat more ice cream in hot months and more crime happens in hot months.
Applying stochastic analyses to politics, ideology, and religion merely points to likely conflicts among believers versus other ideological factions. Not news now and it never was news. Let's no go back to review Christianity vs. Islam vs. Communism vs. ...
But someone made a name for themselves by reinventing the wheel with a new label and probably received tenure as a university professor for it.
"Stochastic" means that you can not link a result to a cause.
People who use the term "stochastic terrorism" are saying "although we cannot link this terrorism to any cause, we have linked this terrorism to this cause."
How can stochastic terrorism be a thing sand artifact is not a thing both be true?
And what if you SHOULD be igusted? Does that mean its open season?
And for all the terroristic attacks lately, arent they against students, family members, and such?
Scratch a liberal, you’ll find a fascist. Every time.
Much better to allow a blog comment section to turn into a cesspool of hatred and racism. Shouting Thomas as one example. And in the weeks leading up to Jan 6 this blog had many comments directly inciting violence. Without any ambiguity. Is that better than a moderation policty?
"Stochastic terrorism is... this idea that you can incite people to violence by saying things that are not specifically inciting"
Taking a tip from Sadducees and Pharisees against Jesus.
The most dangerous part about the "stochastic terrorism" fad is how blatantly the left uses it in a partisan, biased manner. They do not apply it to speech that motivates left-wing disturbances, even when it gives rise to things like Antifa firebombing police precincts or federal courthouses. They do not apply it to non-speech conduct that leads to serious crime, even when prosecutors violate or change policy to let dangerous criminals go free. They only apply it to conservatives.
In that respect, it reminds me of the observation about propaganda: The point is not to make people believe what you are saying, but to demonstrate that you can get away with it.
Stochastic terrorism: a butterfly Tweets about flapping its wings and…
Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children....
They seem to have missed “half the country as deplorable and irredeemable” and “MAGA Republicans as fascist, racist homophobes who are a threat to democracy”.
As usual, the actual suppression of speech is not stochastic.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
stochastic terrorism" = Thought crime.
I like that Jefferson Airplane song "Plastic Stochastic Lover."
Such is Trump's dominance that they come up with a theory to explain both how he succeeds and why they are right to stop him. Some of them spent four years of college in their pyjamas, whining that words can kill.
jim5301 said...
"Much better to allow a blog comment section to turn into a cesspool of hatred and racism. Shouting Thomas as one example. And in the weeks leading up to Jan 6 this blog had many comments directly inciting violence. Without any ambiguity. Is that better than a moderation policty?"
Care to give some examples? Otherwise you're just adding to the stochastic terrorism.
A religion (e.g. ethics) evolves with inferential logic from stochastic policies: DIEversity, minority report, etc.
Yes, of course, Jimmy numbers. All those (unarmed) violent J6 "insurrectionists" were there, pumped up and out for Nancy's lectern, because they read the Althouse comments section.
I'm surprised that the FBI hasn't shut her down yet.
"Stochastic terrorism" seems like nothing more than a modern updating--fancied up with deadening social scientific jargon--of the "bad tendency test" formulated by courts in the early part of the 20th century to allow punishment of speech made in opposition to US participation in World War I and then extended to curtail advocacy of revolution.
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/893/bad-tendency-test
Charlotte Anita Whitney "was arrested for her membership in socialist and communist organizations that were violating California’s syndicalism laws by helping to form the Communist Labor Party. The Court rejected her claims that the laws violated her freedom of speech. Instead, it found “that a State in the exercise of its police power may punish those who abuse this freedom by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to incite crime, disturb the public peace, or endanger the foundations of organized government and threaten its overthrow by unlawful means, is not open to question.”
Laws and court decisions based on the bad tendency test were largely swept away in the post-McCarthy era and thereafter when the US Supreme Court (without dissent) created the 1969 Brandenburg test, protecting political speech that did not actually "incite to imminent lawless action."
"Stochastic terrorism" - "We'd really like to imprison you for you not going along with our agenda, but we can't do that, so we'll pretend this incites violence so we can throw you into prison for wrong think. We'll use fancy words and statistics to make it sound even more evil. To the Gulag for you!"
Are real estate developers, non-vaccinated people, gun owners, etc. also subject to this stochastic thing?....The fact that the author of the piece restricts the phenomenon only to certain victims gives one pause...."Kulaks" was a derogatory term such as calling doctors quacks or lawyers shysters. Kulaks were mostly farmers who knew how to farm. Look at some of Soviet propaganda posters directed against them. The caricatures were as ugly and demeaning as anything the Nazis directed against the Jews. Millions of "kulaks" died in state directed famines. Their horrible deaths are unrecorded and unmourned. Can anyone here name a single victim of Stalin's famines as opposed to the victims of his purges??.....The tribal hatreds of those on the left match and occasionally exceed the tribal hatreds of those on the right.
Lois Lerner's reason for taking the Fifth in her testimony to Congress was that if people found out what she did at the IRS to help Democrats and destroy the Tea Party, they would want to harm her.
jim: "I have a perfect plan to silence my political opposition, and nobody better question it!"
Can anybody find jim5301's condemnation of Rachael Maddow after a loyal viewer of hers took an AR-15 down to the Republican softball practice, and shot it up, because they were "traitors," which is something that Maddow said repeatedly on her show? Or is it "whataboutism" to talk about real "stochastic terrorism" inflamed by Democratic partisans?
Wait, so what was the deal with dogs and some children getting monkeypox? Because the experts told us this thing was super contagious, but then it turned out only gay men with lots of sexual partners were getting sick. And then the disease just went away. We're not supposed to wonder about that?
Why have I never noticed this term before? From the Scientific American article:
If you cant win the debate, Just make shit up.
We have gone from "show me the man and I'll find the crime"
To
"Show me the man, and if there is no crime, I'll invents one"
I thought it was just me, being behind the times as is common for me. cis or cisgender??? But if our Blogmaster is stumped, I'm in high company.
President Trump is the most investigated man in America. After the Federal Govt operating an elaborate sting operation, using human spies and illegal FISA warrants(that the govt was forced to lie in order to have them issued)TheY have NOTHING.
Garland is being forced to petition the court to strip Trump of Atty client privilege. Garland is wanting to 'flip' Trump's own lawyer, and violate the constitution, to make it happen.
So liberals invented Stoachastic _ _ ?_ _ _ to coral a man that they have failed to stop, through Govt implemented fraud.
Its just the intellectual version of "BUT TRUMP"
Their stochastic terrorism gambit was aimed at white men committing more mass shootings, but so far only Asian and black men are doing it. Miscalculation.
Are the scholars the same dopes that invented modern monetary theory? I suspect the same type of people perhaps…
Except for the terminology there is nothing new here. They’ve invented more rules for criminalizing being Republican. Republican speech is hate speech even if it isn’t…
Scientific American became a leftie skin more than a decade ago, btw..
Stochastic Music
The dictionary defines stochastic as (from the Greek stochastikos – skillful in aiming, from stochazesthai – to aim at, guess at, from stochos – target, aim, guess.) as a process that involving chance or probability. In music stochastic elements are randomly generated elements created by strict mathematical processes. Stochastic processes can be used in music either to compose a fixed piece, or produced in performance.
When speaking play music in the background, like in black church.
Researchers have estimated …
By using random number generators until they got the answer they wanted.
If you cant win the debate, Just make shit up.
Yes.
Also, I recall a propaganda section of HS English (1967) in which the term "victory by definition" was used to describe a political technique in which you redefine the meaning of words to win your argument. My teacher was an old fashioned leftist who would be considered a right winger today.
Trump did commit stochastic terrorism, he won the 2016 election. The left of center lost their minds, commited violence for four years.
Trump did commit stochastic terrorism, he won the 2016 election. The left of center lost their minds, commited violence for four years.
... white people as oppressors ...
Hillary Clinton accused half the country of being "Deplorable" and charged them, without evidence, of xenophic, homophic, and other phobic transgressions to inspire a sense of moral superiority and disgust in her voters.
Her voters then rioted in outrage after her loss, trashing downtown Portland and Washington DC in fits of violence that they felt was justified...
Theory checks out ✅
jim5301 is an existential git.
Instead of debating what these absurd terms mean, or whether they apply or not, lets just cut to the chase. We have a bunch of SJWs and leftists who want to censor everyone they dislike, and keep them from saying/writing anything they don't want.
We have to stop them. We have the right as Americans to speak freely and we have the right to assemble peacefully and protest. All this censorship is UnAmerican and needs to be stopped. Not only that, we need Congress to recognize the internet is in fact a public utility, and the 1st admendment applies. The judges have already done that is their usual absurd way. IRC, Trump couldn't block people on the Internet because that was against "free Speech"
Garland is being forced to petition the court to strip Trump of Atty client privilege.
"The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!"
BTW, pointing at this crap and laughing, the usual conservative MO, never works. They don't care if Republicans laugh at them or make "wry comments". They don't care about being "reasonable". The don't care "This is going to come back and bite them." They only want to do one thing: Achieve their objective and censor anyone they dislike.
Cheap Muzak, stuff that pays no composer rights, is generated stochastically, by living musicians, but the way Lem says. It's hard on the ears of anybody who fully understands how it is done. AI could probably do it just fine on synthesizers and normies would not have the training to detect it, and who knows? Someday trained musicians will be fooled.
Staccato or punctuated triggering.
What is Staccato?
You might be asked to play a melody with a staccato character. What does this mean? In this video, Dave explains that playing staccato mean to play notes in a short, detached and spiky way.
So they sort of massively expanded the purview of things they can censor, just in that one moment.
I hope that this comment isn't interpreted as a call to violence, but just lit me say this, the above is the kind of thing that in America, per our Constitution, can only be decided by the representatives of the people, in the form of a Constitutional amendment. At least as long as the FBI and politicians who hold political power over these companies, are involved in these decisions. Otherwise it's textbook fascism.
Enigma said...
2/15/23, 6:14 AM
Have you ever visited Tyler Vigen's "Spurious Correlations" blog? He hasn't posted lately, but a cruise through his earlier posts is a fun trip.
https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
"Just make shit up."
That's the real rule.
As the Universal Theory of Progressive Instrumentalism implies: when person or behavior x harms prog interests, just make shit up to stop it.
This is an expansion of the 'speech is violence' concept into something the courts and law enforcement can act on. This kind of thing is why the FBI needs a new building larger than the Pentagon. Mean time, defund local law enforcement.
Too bad LLR Chuck isn't here to comment on how Althouse, Rogan, and Taibbi are just throwing red meat at the political neanderthals who comment here, as he claims so convincingly in his note on the WaPoo article on Buttigieg.
jim1234 is outraged:
And in the weeks leading up to Jan 6 this blog had many comments directly inciting violence. Without any ambiguity. Is that better than a moderation policty?
Arrest that blog !
"This does explain why black men have gone on a murder and crime spree since the BLM hysteria."
Have they?
Characterizing them as "spies" and "unknown objects" has led to violent attacks on weather balloons.
They fired their missiles but the bloons kept a-comin’
There wasn’t near as many as there was a while ago.
Stolen from Don Surber
Scientific American has long since ceased to be either scientific or American. This article planting the seed of an unscientific and anti-American meme has —to quote Jim Clapper and His Band of Fifty Spooks— “all the earmarks of a disinformation campaign” designed to confuse, divide and randomly terrorize the public into abandoning the idea of free speech and the use of reason.
But no doubt my comment itself fits the ever-so-flexible definition of stochastic terrorism, so I’ll shut up now.
"This does explain why black men have gone on a murder and crime spree since the BLM hysteria."
Have they?
They have, but this isn't the reason. The real reason has to do with the defund the police movements and Leftwing prosecutors who put criminals back on the street instead of into jail.
But no one really cares because the Black men are mostly killing other Black men.
"All this censorship is UnAmerican and needs to be stopped. Not only that, we need Congress to recognize the internet is in fact a public utility, and the 1st admendment applies."
Really? How do you figure? The online resources you use to express yourself publicly are privately owned. The First Amendment only guarantees free expression rights against government suppression of speech. Do you assume the First Amendment protects you from suppression if you enter a bank or a restaurant or any other privately owned places of business shouting epithets or political or religious rants or, frankly, anything at all (or pinning/taping printouts of your opinions on their walls or windows)?
You are free to create your own blog and publish whatever it pleases you to publish. Or, you can buy a printer and a saddle-stitch stapler and publish your own pamphlets to be handed out to all and sundry. True samizdat!!
This may all seem inconvenient to you, but, if your freedom of speech is important to you, don't be lazy about it or be deterred by someone who prefers not to carry your messages via the publishing platforms they own.
Not only that, we need Congress to recognize the internet is in fact a public utility, and the 1st admendment applies.
I make this argument all of the time. The First Amendment's "freedom of the press" does not refer to people (reporters or journalists). That's not how the word was used at the time. The word "press" at the time meant the machinery (a printing press" that allowed people to publish and distribute their ideas. So freedom of the press actually means that the people must have access to the means needed to publish and distribute their ideas, free from censorship.
Twitter and Facebook should be nationalized and run as public utilities.
If you cant win the debate, Just make shit up.
I have unjustly been accused of this by a frequent commentor on this blog.
(I was referring to depleted uranium rounds carried on A-10 aircraft)
The First Amendment only guarantees free expression rights against government suppression of speech.
Government suppression of free speech via these platforms is exactly what has been and continues to go on. Aren't you keeping up? Usually you're better informed.
"I make this argument all of the time. The First Amendment's 'freedom of the press' does not refer to people (reporters or journalists). That's not how the word was used at the time. The word 'press' at the time meant the machinery (a printing press that allowed people to publish and distribute their ideas. So freedom of the press actually means that the people must have access to the means needed to publish and distribute their ideas, free from censorship.
"Twitter and Facebook should be nationalized and run as public utilities."
Completely wrong. The First Amendment protects the right of those who own and operate news organs to publish whatever they see fit to publish. It also protects the rights of citizens to express their ideas through other means they might devise, (banners, posters, signs, pampleteering, street corner oratory, etc.). It does not mean newspapers or other news organs are under obligation of law or constitution to publish information or opinions they do not want to publish, or that they must make available in their publications space to include the screeds and rants of any citizens who wander in to their offices with shit to get off their chests.
(They might choose to publish contrary opinions by the public or by other paid staff or guest writers--hence letter columns and Op Ed pages, etc., as a means of engaging attracting readers, i.e., paying customers, but they have zero obligation to do so.)
"Government suppression of free speech via these platforms is exactly what has been and continues to go on."
Nope. That is "suppression of free speech" (sic) by the owners and editors of these platforms who choose not to permit publication of just any and all ideas or statements contributed by their users, for whatever reasons. If the platforms themselves are prevented by the government from publishing certain ideas and opinions offered by their users, then it's up to the platform owners to fight back and defend their right to publish what they choose.
The online resources you use to express yourself publicly are privately owned.
All public utilities began as privately owned industries.
I'm disappointed by your "build your own platform!" reply Robert Cook. You know better than you are letting on. You are saying that you are OK with corporatism / fascism when it comes to big tech doing the censorious work of the state as long as they are working toward the sort of message control you approve of. I thought better of you.
These guys just can't play it straight, ever:
Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children....
Gee one of these things is NOT like the other. You can't just jam the alphabet together to shield what BTQ fetishists are doing now in promoting "all-ages drag shows" and exposing very young pupils to the B and Q ideas inappropriate for their age group. No one born after 1970 ever really lived in an America where being L or G was shunned and smeared with the "prey upon children" as a group.
Those G and L are our friends and neighbors, coworkers and even people we worship with sometimes. But the crazy T are something altogether and if there's a sane cohort among them (an unlikely proposition, I know) or their fucking nutty allies then it ain't enough to sway their mob.
Cook pissing into the wind hard!
It is censorship and fascism two shitty things that get shittier when combined in fact when the government tells a private actor to censor others. Especially a private actor with such a close working relationship to the intelligence community. Our government has taken a tiny exception for national security to the Constitution designed to "prevent the next 9/11" and used it to justify huge new entire organizations among dozens of federal agencies that did nothing but tell Twitter and Facebook et al what not to publish! Scary Poppins indeed!
And whether Cook agrees or not with the decisions to silence people the Government wants silenced, it is fascism straight up, it is the purest definition of violating the First Amendment and it is so devious to use a third party who then pretends it is their idea and makes up a rule to "apply." It should make you sick Cook. It should make everyone sick of the DOJ and FBI by this point.
Completely wrong. The First Amendment protects the right of those who own and operate news organs to publish whatever they see fit to publish.
Go back and read what I wrote again Comrade Marvin... I said nothing about an obligation of newspapers to print anything. What I wrote was that everyone effectively has the right to use a printing press to publish their own newspaper. Freedom of the press means freedom of access to a printing press. It is not the granting of special rights to a self-selected group of media elites.
Robert Cook said...
This may all seem inconvenient to you, but, if your freedom of speech is important to you, don't be lazy about it or be deterred by someone who prefers not to carry your messages via the publishing platforms they own.
I agree. These social media platforms are publishers and should be treated as such. That includes being liable for what they do choose to publish. So if Alice tweets something false and insulting about Bob, Bob can sue Twitter for damages.
Robert Cook said...
Nope. That is "suppression of free speech" (sic) by the owners and editors of these platforms who choose not to permit publication of just any and all ideas or statements contributed by their users, for whatever reasons.
Not according to Supreme Court precedent. If the government works with an outside entity to censor material that the government could not legally censor on its own then the government (not the publisher) is violating people's 1st amendment rights
Gahrie said...
Freedom of the press means freedom of access to a printing press.
Wrong. It means the government can't prevent you from buying or using a printing press (or other technology that performs a similar role).
If you can't afford a printing press and nobody who has one is willing to let you borrow it your 1st amendment rights have not been violated
"I'm disappointed by your 'build your own platform!' reply Robert Cook. You know better than you are letting on. You are saying that you are OK with corporatism / fascism when it comes to big tech doing the censorious work of the state as long as they are working toward the sort of message control you approve of. I thought better of you."
It's not a matter of whether I'm "OK" with it or not, or if I "approve of message control," (Ha!), it's about what the First Amendment does and does not protects, permits, or requires. I'm certainly not ok with corporate fascism, (which is usually enacted through actions that harm us in various ways, e.g., poisoning the environment, selling harmful goods, crushing competition, etc., but also through propaganda, of course), but to advocate for corporate entities being forced by law to allow communications they oppose on their websites will create perverse consequences. Consider, e.g., a conservative publication (print or online) being forced under law to publish articles cheering the joys of communism, or Christian publications (print or online) being forced to publish articles celebrating Satanism, or the most extreme screeds by radical and violent Muslim groups (stated to clarify that all--in fact, most--Muslim groups are not radical or violent). State force on publishers to disseminate material antithetical to their political or personal convictions is no less a violation of freedom of speech than state force preventing publishers from disseminating that which they wish to publish.
I'm not naive; I know the government has for many years censored and prevented the publication of material in the mass media they wanted kept secret, either through edict or "friendly suggestion," and is still doing so. But that is a matter for the mass media to fight, (supported by the public, one hopes), as they are they are the would-be publishers of the preemptively redacted material. If the media declines to publish content submitted by the public, that is fight between the public and the private businesses who own the media, not proof of "state suppression."
Is Ms. Althouse a fascist facilitating state edict when she deletes objectionable comments by one or several from among the plentiful cohort tinfoil-hat-wearing posters to her blog? Was she a fascist when, for a time, she allowed no commentary, and then only closely scrutinized comments because the comments were becoming a slimy bog of insults and nonsense? (A boggy blog?) As the owner/editor of this blog, she is obliged and entitled to abide by only her own judgement as to what to publish or not. The same is true of other privately owned online media platforms. Fight back by becoming your own publisher! Find and support those media platforms that welcome your support and participation.
Today, it is easier than ever--incredibly easy for anyone!--to publish their own ideas online or to find sympathetic social media that will allow any manner of beliefs and ideas, so to act as if Facebook or Twitter suspending or banning users for online communications which violate their "community guidelines" is the boot of government crushing free speech is simply cry-babyism, spoiled entitlement.
"If the government works with an outside entity to censor material that the government could not legally censor on its own then the government (not the publisher) is violating people's 1st amendment rights."
You have to prove the online media platform censored or removed material at the behest of government. If you can, great! If proving this leads to legal decisions preventing such government coercion of print or online media platforms, better yet! It probably is true in rare occasions; however, most of the time I'd bet it's simply the media platform acting for its own reasons. (I seriously doubt the government concerns itself greatly--or at all--with the half-baked commentary that comprises the vast body of online reader commentary published--or submitted--each day.)
"Go back and read what I wrote again Comrade Marvin... I said nothing about an obligation of newspapers to print anything."
Yes, Gary, on rereading, I concede your phrasing can mean that. However, I suggest your phrasing is ambiguous, leading to the misreading your meaning, as I did, and as poster IGNORANCE IS BLISS did, as well.
You have to prove the online media platform censored or removed material at the behest of government. If you can, great! If proving this leads to legal decisions preventing such government coercion of print or online media platforms, better yet! It probably is true in rare occasions; however, most of the time I'd bet it's simply the media platform acting for its own reasons. (I seriously doubt the government concerns itself greatly--or at all--with the half-baked commentary that comprises the vast body of online reader commentary published--or submitted--each day.)
You haven't been paying attention to the Twitter files have you? Because they prove that this was precisely the case.
Robert Cook said...
You have to prove the online media platform censored or removed material at the behest of government. If you can, great! If proving this leads to legal decisions preventing such government coercion of print or online media platforms, better yet! It probably is true in rare occasions; however, most of the time I'd bet it's simply the media platform acting for its own reasons.
The Twitter files show that it was happening there, and it is inconceivable that they were not at least attempting to do the same with the other major platforms. The government knew that Twitter had a rule against misinformation. They advised Twitter (and other platforms) about what was misinformation. Then the government requested that Twitter review posts that the government thought were misinformation.
QED.
It does not matter that in some cases Twitter did not delete posts pointed to by the government. The government was not pointing to posts in a content-neutral way. If Twitter delete a single post that they otherwise would not have then the government violated that poster's 1st amendment rights.
Freedom of the press means freedom of access to a printing press.
Wrong. It means the government can't prevent you from buying or using a printing press (or other technology that performs a similar role).
If you can't afford a printing press and nobody who has one is willing to let you borrow it your 1st amendment rights have not been violated
Why do you believe that freedom of access means free? More importantly why do you think I believe that? Freedom of access means the ability to buy or use something, not the right to get something free.
I don't see how you have access to something that you can't access. But I'm willing to accept that my understanding of that phrase is wrong, and it is certainly not worth arguing about.
Please accept my apology.
Robert Cook,
What others have said, basically. (Late to the game as usual!). The essence of the anti-Twitter, &c., beef is not that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, &c. ought to be "common carriers" like the phone system or the Post Office (though, to be sure, some have made that argument here). The real argument is that the US Government is not-at-all-subtly "nudging" Twitter to do its censoring for it, as Twitter can legally censor, but the Feds can't. This is what the large majority of the "Twitter Files" posts were intended to demonstrate. And IMO they did a damn good job of it.
If you can look at the FBI emailing Twitter HQ with a bunch of "problematic" tweets, and Twitter emailing back to say, basically, "problems taken care of," and not see this as the FBI getting Twitter to censor what it couldn't legally censor itself, well . . .
You have to prove the online media platform censored or removed material at the behest of government. If you can, great! If proving this leads to legal decisions preventing such government coercion of print or online media platforms, better yet! It probably is true in rare occasions; however, most of the time I'd bet it's simply the media platform acting for its own reasons.
I attribute that statement to willful ignorance as opposed to blatant dishonesty. Neither is a good look.
"You haven't been paying attention to the Twitter files have you? Because they prove that this was precisely the case."
No. I am not a user of Twitter and I have zero interest in becoming one. It strikes me that Twitter is completely unsuitable as a crucial source of information. Who is vetting the information provided? Who can tell if someone is providing valid or invalid information, fact or fiction? At least Wikipedia, a platform many dismiss, offers citations whereby one can follow up and follow the trail of information.
Watching the video now.
Really interesting.
I just wanted to throw out the possibility that maybe Elon Musk bought Twitter out of a patriotic move. Thought it would help out his adopted homeland. He wasn't trying to make money. He wasn't trying to make more billions. He was spending billions (he can afford it) because he loved Twitter (he's a big time user of the platform) and maybe he had a suspicion that something wasn't right.
Late last year I took a look at this in the context of two upcoming SCOTUS cases,
Stochastic terrorism and S.230:
But it’s possible that SCOTUS will over-affirm that point, and wind up granting these monopolies the power they claim they have, which is an unrestricted right to censor – whether in good faith or bad – without any liability whatsoever, and to make what are clearly publisher decisions, including about what stories to elevate and which to suppress and what headlines they themselves write with total immunity afforded to no other publisher in the world.
And of course the argument that “the algorithms must be changed to stop speech that ’causes harm” is the leftist censor mafia’s entire argument, and that is the central legal claim of this case. If the family pressing the lawsuit wins on its theory that the tech companies are at fault for not tweaking their “algorithms” to suppress “harmful content,” then all the tech companies will say that their censorship of “anti-trans“, “anti-gay“, “anti-woman“, “anti-minority“, “anti-Muslim“, “anti-Covid-19 measures”, “anti-Carbon Zero”, and anti-anything-they-don’t-like-content – is no longer just their choice but required by the Supreme Court.
I hope SCOTUS combines the two because they do overlap.
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